That’s How I Roll: A Novel by Andrew Vachss

that feeling I had: I wanted to protect him even more than I wanted to walk.
    The wheelchair didn’t stop me. I could roll right over, pick up Tory-boy, and do everything that had to be done. Just like I could pick up the milk Mrs. Slater left for me every day. It was always in actual baby bottles, in a little cooler. I knew how to heat it up, how to test it, and everything.
    There was other stuff Mrs. Slater left, too. Mostly little jars of baby food, but there was also a blue blanket, stuff to put on Tory-boy’s gums when his teeth were coming in … so many things I couldn’t even count.
    It was like Mrs. Slater had read the same books I had, because, every time a book said a baby would need something, she’d have it waiting for me.
    hen I was taking care of the baby, I knew he always had to be in the center of this gyroscope I was building in my mind. Maybe “gyroscope” isn’t the right word: what I saw was all those spinning rings, constantly in motion around a center post. I don’t know how I knew—it wasn’t anything I’d read.
    Maybe it was the spirits talking to me. That’s the only way to explain how I was so dead certain about “balance” and “safe” having the same meaning.
    I knew the exact nature of my balance. I could see it in my mind: swirling rings of pure black obsidian, every blade sharpened to such an edge that it made a surgeon’s scalpel look like a flat rock.
    Like everything of value, that perfect sharpness came at a price. Those “black knives” you can read about in Aztec legends were made from volcanic glass. Such a blade could be used only to slice, never to stab.
    Somehow, I knew if I could always keep those rings spinning the center post would never fall over. It might lean—sometimes so far over that I’d be afraid—but it would not fall. No matter what hit against those rings, the center would stay upright.
    I knew something else. I knew that, once anyone tried to cross into our side of those rings, me and Tory-boy would be safe from them, no matter what evil might be on their mind to do.
    It may have been the only thing a half-person like me could ever manage to put together by himself—I had to do all the work inside my mind. But I knew, I absolutely knew, that if I used the half of me that worked I could get it done.
    I never questioned how I knew this.
    couldn’t walk, but I could always get around. And I was so smart the teachers didn’t know what to do with me. None of that made me safe. The Beast could unbalance my whole world just by tipping over my wheelchair.
    He did that a lot, especially when he was drunk. Which was most of the time. But he did it when he was sober, too. He liked doing things like that. Liked showing you who was holding the whip hand. His favorite thing in life was raising fear in others.
    ory-boy might have been slow in the head, but he was fast on his feet. Soon as he could crawl, he would always try to scramble away when he heard the Beast coming. But there was no place to hide inside that miserable little shack, and he got hit on plenty.
    Whenever the Beast went into one of his rages, Tory-boy would run to me. He never ran to Rory-Anne. He learned real quick that she wouldn’t do anything. But even though I was only a child, and crippled to boot, Tory-boy developed the belief that I could protect him.
    Maybe that was because, lots of times, I actually did. I knew that all I had to do was say the right words to the Beast and he’d forget about beating on Tory-boy and go right after me.
    And I knew he’d stop a lot quicker if I didn’t cry or scream. When he whipped Rory-Anne, the more she’d scream the longer he’d keep at it.
    I think that’s when I stopped feeling the hurt he put on me. After a while, I could see him doing it but it was like I was hovering above it all.
    Every time he was finished with me, I would go find Tory-boy.I’d cuddle him on my lap, rub his chest, and whisper soft until he stopped being